Postdoctoral position in ocean acoustics at the University of Liège (Belgium)

The research project aims to contribute to the sustainable development and noise reduction of activities related to offshore wind parks in Europe. The objective of the project is to develop and validate a sound propagation model for the ocean capable to give a precise evaluation of the noise level in the ocean generated by wind parks and to quantify it. The project should also develop an appropriate measurement strategy related to this question. The project is coordinated by a company in the region of Liège (Belgium). The duration of the project is 24 months starting in summer or autumn 2013.

A postdoctoral researcher will be employed at the University of Liège for the duration of the project. The researcher will be in charge of the development, programming and validation of the sound propagation model in collaboration with the partners of the project:

GHER (research unit in physical oceanography of the University of Liège)

Intelsig (research unit in exploitation of signals and images of the University of Liège)

An industrial partner coordinating the project.

Profile:

PhD in science or engineering

The candidate should ideally have experience in acoustics or in a related domain (wave propagation)

Expertise in mathematical modelling to simulate physical problems

Candidates should send a their CV (including the complete reference of their peer-reviewed scientific publications) and a short letter of motivation to the secretary of Prof. Jean-Marie Beckers (C. Peelen, oceanphys@ulg.ac.be). Applications can be sent until the position is filled and the announcement removed from http://modb.oce.ulg.ac.be/mediawiki/index.php/Jobs.

Ph.D. position starting 1 July 2013

Our research group is an active partner in several EU projects dealing with archiving and distributing marine data. In SeaDataNet we developped DIVA, which is now the standard analysis tool for producing climatologies for the different regional seas around Europe and a plug-in for the well known package Ocean Data View. It has also been used in the EMODNET chemistry lot for producing statistics on major chemical parameters in the Sea. In addition a interactive web-visualisation tool exploiting the climatologies was prepared (OceanBrowser) and is now used for discovery services.

GHER has been awarded follow-up project SEADATANETII and new EMODNET lots in chemistry and biology
EMODNET Assembly groups.
The work in these projects will allow for a Ph.D. position with developping activities and oceanographic research.

The work will include development of new DIVA functionalities (multivariate analyses, dealing with glider data, correlated observational errors, analysis of abundance data ...), maintenance of the code (optimisation, dynamic allocations ...) , organisation of workshops and guidance of regional climatology production.

The candidate will also have time to apply DIVA to a scientific question, exploiting existing databases and the newly developped functionalities. These questions will be defined by the candidate in coherence with our group. Possible questions to be tackled are:

Detection of correlation in Levantine Intermediate Water content with the North Atlantic Oscillation

Quantification and time evolution of hypoxia conditions in the Black Sea

Deriving abundance distributions of marine species (EMODNET Biology)

The work will be performed in the GHER group with strong interactions with other European groups, leading to interesting post-doc perspectives.

The candidate should have experience in statistical data analysis, programming under Linux/Unix and some notions in oceanography.